Ho Ho 5K race recap and results

For the past several years, X-Dog Events has put together the Ho Ho 5K race at Cook Park in Tigard in early December. It's a fun, family-friendly event that also serves as a charity food drive. The "Ho Ho" in the race name refers to the Hostess treat, but with the imminent demise of Hostess, inquiring minds wanted to know what would happen to the race. Read on for the answer, for a race recap, and for the race results.

The gathering crowd at Cook Park, shortly before race time.Tung Yin

This year's Ho Ho 5K race took place on December 9, at 10 a.m. -- which is an eminently civilized hour for a road race.

It was a fairly typical December morning in Oregon: overcast, cool, with a constant threat of rain.

There had been no pre-race bib pick-up, so I made sure to get to Cook Park by about 9:35 or so. This was plenty of time to get checked in. I waited for just one person ahead of me in the "S-Z" line and picked up my bib (#382). This was not a chip-timed race, and the racing bib came with a tear-away section at the bottom with my name, age, and gender for the race organizers to take at the finish line for double-checking the hand-timing.

Ho Hos substitutes!Tung Yin

I warmed up a bit and then decided to tackle the burning question: were there Ho Hos?

As you can see in the picture to the left, the Ho Ho race may need a new name next year unless someone steps forward to buy the Ho Hos brand name . . . .

Race director Kevin Foreman did assure us that we would be offered the same number of (unhealthy) calories as before. That brought a cheer from the crowd.

As I mentioned, this race is also a charity drive, and before sending us off on the course, the race director announced that X-Dog had collected over 10,000 pounds of food and over 1000 blankets to be given to a local charity for distribution to the needy. Impressive!

Okay, then it was race time. We runners had assembled on the road at the very end of SW 92nd Avenue, where it goes past the Cook Park parking lots into the heart of the park. The "special guest" of the race stepped out of his Suburu, or as they called it, the Sleighburu, and waved hi to all of us.

The special guest & race starterTung Yin

Santa got back in his car, honked, and we were off. As is customary for this race, Santa drove the first mile and a third or so to highlight the race course for us. (Of course, there were also yellow cones throughout, marking the route.)

The first part of the race was a straight shot up SW 92nd Avenue, toward Tigard High School. This was about 0.40 miles, with a short stretch in there (about 1/6 of a mile) with a 70 feet ascent.

From there, a left turn on SW Millen Drive into the local residential neighborhood. Millen dead ended into SW Copper Creek Drive, which called for another left turn. Copper Creek soon ended, and we turned right on SW Riverwood Lane, heading west. The roads were mostly clear here, so there wasn't a lot of clogging of the path. There were gently rolling hills . . . well, "hills" is probably generous, but anyway, there was some altitude variation.

As usual, I spent the night before the race repeating "negative splits, negative splits, negative splits," but of course, I failed to heed my own advice. My first mile (about halfway along Riverwood) clocked in at 6:42, according to RunKeeper. That actually wouldn't be too fast if I were looking to run a sub-21 minute 5K (my goal), and it didn't feel like it had drained too much of my endurance, but this was also probably the easiest part of the course.

Just before the 1.5 mile mark, we turned off the road. Santa was there with a female helper, waving us on. We went down a steep paved trail entering a forested path running parallel to the Tualatin River. The hills here were sharper than in the residential neighborhood.

At the 2 1/4 mile mark, the trail turned from paved to a soft, dirt trail through the trees. This was a nice change of pace, but it lasted only a quarter of a mile. The course then took us on to another parking lot at the southern end of Cook Park. We hit a short turnaround and then headed back toward the staging area.

The end (sort of)!Tung Yin

By the way, all that night-before pep talk about negative splits . . . failed again. My mile 2 was 7:02, and mile 3 was 7:10, although mile 2 was an overall loss of 31 feet, while mile 3 was an overall gain of 28 feet -- and from looking at the elevation map on RunKeeper, the uphill portions of mile 3 were steeper.

Anyway, to the left is a picture of the end point of the race. Notice the sign with the black arrow and the X pointing to the right? You see, this is the end point of the race, except that it's the end coming from the other direction. Going this way, you have to run past the end point to the end of this main trail, hit a turnaround, and sprint back. (When I ran this race for the first time last year, I didn't know that about the course, so it was a bit of a nasty surprise, especially since I suffered a mild calf pull near the end of that race.) This year, I was prepared at least and managed a decent kick at the end.

Finishers' rewards!Tung Yin

Race director Kevin Foreman records times.Tung Yin

I finished in an official, hand-timed time of 21:08, good for 21st out of 399 finishers. I was hoping for 20:59 or better, but this is still a 5K PR for me.

By the way, I gather that for marathon distance and greater, the pre-race dinner calls for serious carbo-loading. 5K is a short enough distance that there's no need for that. However, I may have hit upon a different pre-race eating ritual: I had a nice juicy cheeseburger with guacamole, plus some of my son's cheeseburger, at Fresh Grill in Beaverton. Hey, it's worth testing whether lots of protein and fat the night before leads to optimal racing results!

In any event, the Ho Ho 5K is a fun jingle-bell race in the southwest area that I look forward to in 2013. Besides the Ho Hos-substitutes and good atmosphere, all finishers could take home a Douglas fir seedling, ready for planting. The only thing that would improve it would be chip-timing!